The Doctor’s Wife

discussed in biography

Ariyoshi’s first major novel, Kinokawa (1964; The River Ki), chronicles three generations of aristocratic women in the 20th century. Hanaoka Seishū no tsuma (1967; The Doctor’s Wife), perhaps her best-known work, concerns the brave wife and domineering mother of Hanaoka Seishū, a 19th-century surgeon who pioneered the surgical use of anesthesia....